TX-17 · House

The district, in brief

Texas's 17th is a new district for 2026 anchored in Waco and its surrounding metropolitan area, with a small sliver extending into the east side of Temple and a southern sliver of Williamson County, where the Austin suburb of Cedar Park is connected to the rest of the district by a sliver of Round Rock. On these lines the district gave 60% to Donald Trump and 57.5% to Ted Cruz in 2024.

The incumbent is Republican Pete Sessions, re-elected with 66.4% in 2024 and unopposed in his 2026 primary with 59,724 votes after pastor Rob Brown withdrew to run in the 10th district. Sessions is endorsed by Donald Trump, Greg Abbott and AIPAC. The Democratic nominee is Casey Shepard, an attorney, who finished second in the first round (Milah Flores 42.6%, Shepard 32.4%, James Gordon Mitchell 25.0%) and won the runoff 59.9% to 40.1%. The Democratic primary section lists the Texas AFL-CIO, the Austin American-Statesman and The Austin Chronicle as endorsers in three separate blocks without naming which candidate each backed. As of April 26, 2026 Sessions had raised $901,426 with $888,055 on hand; Shepard had raised $8,004 with $2,384 on hand, having self-funded $5,000 of her earlier $5,707.

Every rater with a call listed has the seat R: Decision Desk HQ (September 8, 2026), the Cook Political Report (February 6, 2025), Inside Elections (March 7, 2025) and Sabato's Crystal Ball (September 18, 2025). The Silver Bulletin row is dated August 20, 2026 but shows no ranking.

A paragraph quoting a model forecast from the day this brief was written is omitted; the current forecast is at the top of this page.

The facts, each beside its sentence

Not in the source: No district polls: the text has none and the model's basis says no district polls.; The Silver Bulletin row in the ratings table carries a date but no ranking.; No ratings finer than 'R' are given.; The three Democratic endorsement blocks (Texas AFL-CIO, Austin American-Statesman, Austin Chronicle) are not labelled by candidate; with three candidates in the primary, none is attributed here.; Shepard's background is given only as 'attorney'.

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as efe72be7e14a; written by claude-fable-5-1 (batch reader) on 2026-09-30 and checked mechanically: every quote occurs verbatim in the archived text, every number in the brief occurs in the inputs. No probability here is the reader's.

Who holds the seat now

Pete Sessions (Republican), in this chamber since 1997, 14 terms. Committees: House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform; House Committee on Financial Services.

From the congress-legislators dataset (CC0), archived as ae8cb9477c48. For a Senate race this lists both of the state's senators; the one whose term ends in the election year holds the seat on the ballot. For a House district redrawn for 2026 it is the member elected under the old lines with this number, who may be running elsewhere; the dossier above names who is running here.

How it has voted for president

A shift of 3.0 points toward the Democrats from 2016 to 2024. county returns placed on the current lines by 2020 block population; MEDSL county file (2016), an MIT-licensed county file (2020, checked against certified state results) and MEDSL precinct returns (2024). For a district split across counties this is an estimate, and where the state published the exact 2024 figure for these lines, that exact figure is the one the model uses.

Who are the voters?

Of about 504,050 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 42.2% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 42.7% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 1.0 points toward Democrats. Group shares are estimated from how results vary across the state's census tracts (ecological inference, anchored to Pew's 2020 validated-voter figures) and calibrated to this district's actual 2020 vote; turnout is the Census survey's state rate by race and national rate by education, whose state samples carry margins of several points.

Not answered here: how each group will vote in 2026. These are 2020 preferences; this profile is description, not yet an input to the forecast.

The money

FEC bulk candidate summaries through June 30, 2026; $52 of independent expenditures for or against these candidates this cycle (FEC Schedule E, types 24E and 24A), which is the parties' and outside groups' own revealed view of whether this seat is in play.

The district in numbers

ACS 5-year 2023, assembled from census tracts by the 2020 population of their blocks inside the current lines, because the Bureau has not tabulated these lines; medians are population-weighted means of tract medians. Unemployment is the BLS county series placed on the district by block population, not seasonally adjusted, so changes are same-month comparisons. Income, transfers and jobs are BEA county accounts placed the same way, compared with the average district. Every other figure is a named column of a named table in the Bureau's summary file, archived before it was read. This is what a reader knows about a district before looking at a poll; the model does not yet use it, and whether it should is a registered question.

Who is favoured, and by how much?

The 90% interval runs from -28.1 to +2.1 points, D-R. It is wide because this district has never been polled.

What is this built on?

A model trained on every contested House race 2012-2024 predicts this district's lean from its own record: presidential and House results on the current lines, incumbency, both candidates' prior offices, outside and party money before 1 October, demographics and public-assistance shares from the Census release before the election, local unemployment and income, and religious tradition. The national margin comes from presidential approval, the economy, the midterm penalty and the generic ballot corrected for its measured lean. Draws share national and state errors, so the seat total and this district come from the same simulation.

Not answered here: district polls, which are not yet folded in.

Why does the model say this?

Each figure is how far this district's predicted lean moves when that one feature is set to the typical value across 2026 districts, everything else held: 2024 presidential lean (R+20.4): 7.2 pts toward the Republican; 2024 House lean: 3.3 pts toward the Republican; experience gap (-4 levels, D minus R): 1.6 pts toward the Republican; religion: evangelical (23.3%): 0.7 pts toward the Democrat; 2020 presidential lean (R+20.0): 0.3 pts toward the Democrat.

How sure is it, and of what?

Total sd 9.16 points, made of the seat's own volatility 91%, correlated polling error 9%. The decomposition is stored with the forecast rather than reconstructed, so a probability whose dominant input is a placeholder is visibly that.

Not answered here: a nowcast. 'If ballots were cast today' needs something that observes today, and for a House district nothing does. Publishing the election-day figure under both labels would make one forecast look like two.

How was this number made?

Run 6f211e6f-2bdc-4dda-8f72-81fc628dab0b, house_district_prior/0.2.0, as of 2026-10-02. Promoted by a pre-registered gate: on 2016-2022 its Brier score was 0.036 against 0.049 for the previous method, and on a single 2024 run 0.023 against 0.032 (experiments/district_gate_result.md, with an independent review).